Under polite GOP questioning, Blumenthal tries not to help

Published: Saturday, February 06, 1999

WASHINGTON (AP) - The House prosecutor was polite, but White House aide Sidney Blumenthal didn't seem to be in a cooperative mood.

With a profusion of "Thank yous," Rep. James Rogan, R-Calif., tried to elicit answers from Blumenthal about White House meetings on damage control concerning Monica Lewinsky and conversations he had with President Clinton on the subject, according to transcripts of the deposition released Friday.

But three times in the first minutes, Blumenthal said he couldn't remember. So Rogan referred to previous grand jury testimony and asked him to read it.

"I'm not trying to trick you or anything," Rogan said. Then, a bit later, he said, "Let me see if this helps to refresh your recollection."

For the most part, Blumenthal answered abruptly with little elaboration, twice saying "mm-hmm" and "could be" and at one point answering simply "No" 18 times in answer to a series of questions about Clinton and Ms. Lewinsky regarding gifts, telephone conversations, previous grand jury statements and possible cover-ups.

Blumenthal confirmed that Clinton told the White House

Associated Press

Senators Joseph Lieberman, D-Conn., and Arlen Specter, R-Penn., share a laugh after a news conference calling for open deliberations in President Clinton's impeachment trial.

aide that Ms. Lewinsky had "come on to him," demanded sex and been turned down and that she told him she was known as "the stalker" and might claim

she'd had an affair with him.

"I think that's when I told him that `You can't get near crazy people, uh, troubled people,' " Blumenthal said. " `You're president. You just have to separate yourself from this.' "

Under questioning from Rep. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., Blumenthal also repeated that Clinton never retracted those statements about Ms. Lewinsky. Despite that, Blumenthal insisted he did not leak bad information about her to the press.

"I have no idea how anything came to be attributed to a White House source," he said.

Asked if he now believes the president lied to him, Blumenthal said, "I do."

Graham started by promising "direct, to the point" queries "so we can all go home."

But several times, the senators presiding over the deposition - Republican Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania and Democrat John Edwards of North Carolina - were asked to rule on objections to questions in part because of their vagueness.

"Perhaps you can avoid it just by pinpointing it a little more," Specter told Graham once.laserlikesae

The session ended chaotically, with Blumenthal and Graham talking over each other as the White House aide said he didn't know how letters to Clinton from Kathleen Willey - who claims the president groped her in the Oval Office - were released to the media.